Hiked by: Tim and Valerie on March 15, 2008 - As part of an out-and-back over Avalon, Field and Willey (Avalon Trail and Willey Range Trail)
Conditions: The day was warmer than we'd seen for hiking in quite some time. About 37 degrees at the start, going down to about 30 degrees at the summits. The snow bridge over the brook was still holding strong.
From the Crawford Depot, the trail was well-packed and solid. We started out in bare boots, to try to give our feet a good start. We had no issues at all to the intersection with the A-Z trail at 1.3 miles. At that time, Tim put on his crampons and Val, her Stabilicers. The half-mile towards Mt Avalon seemed like one long, steep luge-run. And we were climbing up it. We didn't take the short spur trail to the summit of Mt Avalon. If we had, it would have looked exactly the same as every other time we've been there. Solid gray clouds and nothing else.
As we got closer to the top of Mt Field, the ice on the trees started to build up and there was a lot more new powder on the ground. Just a couple hundred yards before the summit, Tim was accosted by a Gray Jay for his snack. Comparing the trail signs here with those from our trip in June 2006, you get an idea of how much snow is on the ground.
The summit of Mount Field was desolate but gorgeous. It took us about 2hrs 15minutes to get to the summit. A different Gray Jay begged here. The summit cairn is completely gone. That means there must be 4-5 feet of snow in the middle of the open space where we stopped.
We discussed the possibility of going on for Mt Willey and switched into our snowshoes. Just then, a young man popped out of the woods on the trail from Mt Willey. He said that he had been the first one of the day (and thus the first one since the new snow fell) to cross over this trail. He apologized that he'd lost and re-found the trail to Mt Willey a few times, and he had not made it all the way to the summit. He also said that there were five other people in front of us if we chose to go that way. We decided to try it. The trail across really wasn't that bad. There were a couple steep spots, and a couple places where the blazes would indicate that we were on the trail, but the spruce traps and unconsolidated snow would indicate otherwise. We did cross paths with the other five hikers, all on their way out as we were going in. They assured us that if we just followed the meandering paths, we would find the summit. Sure enough, we did. We encountered some of the same evergreen madness that we saw on Mount Passaconaway last weekend - where the ice had pulled the boughs down into the trail. They weighed so much and clanked together with the ice when we tried to push them aside. Mt Willey summit was like another world. It's hard to imagine that the trees can survive this type of ice.
On the way back, we didn't see anyone until we were almost at the intersection with the Mt Williard trail. We wore our snowshoes until we were about half-way down Mt Field, then Val switched over to crampons for the walk down the "luge-run". Tim tried the sliding technique that Val used on Little Haystack, but he wasn't the first to slide down these trails and thus most of the snow necessary to help him control his speed and direction was gone. He went really fast. And Val in her crampons, taking baby steps down the steep slope, was a long way back. :-)
This was the view of Avalon from part-way down Field.
We got back to the car around 5:20pm. It was a long day, but our first Winter Two-fer.